Mr. Sweepy's Forums

Does anyone have an easy system for keeping track of their winnings?  I usually win atleast a few things a week.  I'm working on an excel spreadsheet, but can't seem to keep it simple.  I'll post it when I'm done.

What happened to my post???  If this ends up being a duplicate post I apologize, but it looks like my reply disappeared so I'm retyping.. 

What I would LOVE, would be if someone like Mr Softy, or a software/program developer could invent something that we could all use to track our Sweep statistics.  Something that when you enter your win information that it automatically calculates and tracks all the statistics like total sweeps won, total $ amount won per year, month, etc. % of wins won by one time entry, dailies, etc. Even keep track of the specific win information like the name of the sweep, sponser, etc.  I would LOVE that! I'd even PAY for it!  An Excel spreadsheet is okay, but I'd love a nice program with more capabilities and nice graphics, etc.  Mr Softy, here's your next project! Hahhahaha!

This might sound strange but I've been using Quicken (came pre-installed on my laptop and I'm thinking it's pre-installed on a good many computers, because the rest of our computers have it, also).  I have it set up as a "Cash" account, in the Ref. field I enter whether it was an instant win, 1x entry, etc.  In the Payee field I enter the company sponsoring the sweeps; in the category field I enter "other income," and in the memo field I enter the prize.  The approx. retail value is then entered in the Receive field.  For the Date field, I enter the date I won, or was notified.  Once a prize has been received, I mark it as "cleared."  Categories can be added, so I may at some point edit them to reflect the type of sweepstakes entry...instant win, 1x, etc.

It works really well, you can print reports, graphs, compare winnings from year to year, month to month etc. etc. and it keeps a running balance with each new "transaction."  There's also an address book, great for keeping sponsor's contact information (for those big wins), and you can set reminders or notes.  You can do the same if you have any verson of Microsoft Money installed (that comes pre-installed on some computers also!)

I don't know that I would run out and buy it just for this (you can get the current version for about 29.95) but it is worth checking to see if it was pre-installed on your computer!

Sounds like a great project, but I would think that there are other ways like indicated in the Quicken idea that may be better suited.

But maybe I will have to play with it and see what I could come up with.  It may just be a good Excel template that could be used to keep track of this and it would have charts that auto populate with new data in sheet. 

My question back to you, is it something that would be worth having on Sweepstakestoday.com as a feature to let you track them like MyLuckyList except that you enter them, etc.?  Not signing up for it yet, just wanted to see what you thought.

Mr. Softy 

Great idea brig3u; sounds like it might be a better way than  what I've been doing since you can run statistics.  I dont have Quickin on my computer unfortunately, I wish I did!  I had thought of checking off the sweeps that I've received the prize for and that's a great idea I plan on utilizing because there have been a couple sweeps that I won when I forgot to use the online code or whatever before they expired so I lost out.  That would be a good way to be sure I've not fogotten anything.  Thanks very much for your suggestions.

And thank you Mr Softy for giving it a thought as well.  Personally I would love a spreadsheet as a feature of Sweepstakes Today.  It think it would be a feature no other sweep website offers as well.  I hope you get alot of other feedback from other members asking for the same feature because I think its a great idea.  Something to think about for the future.  Until then, maybe I'll try to utilize the Quicken idea as that sounds good too but I'll have to give it a test trial before I know for sure.

 Thanks for the ideas everyone!

Thanks for the response.  I only want to have us think about things that would even make this site better.  You all are great to us and we want to keep on adding value to all of you sweepers.

 So keep the ideas coming and have a great time here.

Mr. Softy

 I have one but all I've won is a t-shirt, and I havn't been doing this for long, so basicly I don't know what other information could be useful. I'm open to suggestions on other fields and such.  If this upload place gives you problems then message me or something, and I can just e-mail it to you.  sweep2.xls 

Starting at row 5, columns  b to g are the only fields for entering right now.  z is used for fmv adj total(e2), because I couldn't get it to work from 1 equation, only so much junk you can stuff in one equation I guess. Origonally e2 was =SUM(IF(E5,E5,D5):IF(E100,E100,D100)) but it just counted up d and e.  The cells are only formated to 50, the more that are formated the bigger the file size.